We’re watching you. That’s the message our political and corporate overlords send us every day, whether it’s here in the UK with Prime Minister Theresa May’s Snooper’s Charter, increased sharing of personal information by the National Security Agency in the US, or governments in general demanding to know exactly how many kitten videos you liked on Facebook. Even…
Pathfinder: Horror Adventures Turns Your Pathfinder Campaigns Upside Down
Traditional swords-and-sorcery role-playing games, like Dungeons and Dragons and its bastard successor Pathfinder, thrive on empowering their players, making them feel like heroes who can conquer any challenge with their wits, muscles, and magic items. These games are pretty much the opposite of horror role-playing games like Call of Cthulhu, which aim to disempower their players, to make them…
We Happy Few – Full Of Sound And Fury, Signifying Nothing (Yet)
Disclaimer: This preview is based on an Early Access version of We Happy Few, not the finished product. An access code was provided by the publisher. Not since the original Bioshock have I been as excited about a game as I was about We Happy Few, the retrofuturistic open-world survival game from indie studio Compulsion Games. Like Bioshock, it is set…
Five Great Indie Horror Games You Can Play For Free on Itch.io
Summer can be expensive – holidays, air conditioning, building a bunker in your backyard and stocking it with supplies in case Trump becomes President. It’s also a rubbish time for video gaming, as companies hold everything back in order to cash in on the impending acquisitive orgy of Christmas. But do not despair! I have been…
Five More Board Games for Bastards
Board games are undergoing a Renaissance right now. The time when roll-and-move games ruled the roost, your progress dictated by the luck of the dice, has gone. Many modern board games test you on your ability to lie and manipulate, to spot the lies and manipulations of others, to bluff, bluster, and seize your opportunities…
Playdead’s “Inside” Is A Disconcerting Work Of Art
It’s been three days, but I’m still trying to puzzle out the ending to Inside. For those not in the know, Inside is Danish developer Playdead’s follow-up to their 2010 indie game hit, Limbo. Like Limbo, Inside is a 2-D puzzle platformer with more than a hint of Scandinavian darkness; in both games, a young boy must progress through a sinister, monochrome world,…
Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Spiderlight Tears Up The Heroic Fantasy Rulebook
British author Adrian Tchaikovsky’s stand-alone fantasy novel Spiderlight is a rip-roaring, old-fashioned heroic fantasy romp that also messes playfully with some of the genre’s more outdated conventions. The initial set-up comes straight out of the Dungeons and Dragons tie-in novels of the 1980s: an adventuring party (a cleric of the one true God, an arrogant knight, a speedy ranger,…
Derren Brown – From Mental Trickery to Social Commentary
Last night I went to a faith healing – the lame walked again, the half-blind cast their glasses aside and read with ease, and decades-old medical complaints vanished, leaving their sufferers blissfully free of pain for the first time in years. People spoke in tongues, demons were cast out, and God was invoked, along with…
Malifaux Immerses You in Steampunk Western Horror Wargaming
This time last year, I was done with wargaming, ending 20 years of involvement in a hobby that had even included a brief stint managing my local Games Workshop, and a much longer stint working its tills and painting its models. I was finished, my enthusiasm drained by Games Workshop’s focus on younger gamers and the…
Henry Rollins: The World’s Angriest Hippie?
Near the end of an epic three-hour performance at London’s Barbican, Henry Rollins described himself as a “tree-hugging hippie.” Strange words for the ex-vocalist of seminal hardcore punk band Black Flag, a man who was once notorious for getting into fist-fights with his own audiences. Has time mellowed the L.A. Times’ first choice for “angriest man in Los…
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